Tag: Brazil

Memories & Living With La Cabra Negra

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Humour me, I’m going to be self-indulgent. I’ve been having some weird sensations recently. It has been a long time since I’ve gone this long without travelling to another country. Even travelling within one place. The lockdown has made me change habits. You can’t run off somewhere when you fancy a change if the whole world is on lockdown. Sitting on a jungle beach in Costa Rica, diving in the Andaman Islands or maybe with a mate of mine in Brazil. Just sailing somewhere warm like Fiji or the icy cold north has also entered my little realm of fantasy recently. But I’m also in a weird way happy not to be running off. As I said habits have changed and I see possibilities with this version of normality I have created. It needs to evolve and it’ll change immeasurably before I make it in my own image but I suspect all of those things will still happen at some point before and after I reach this point. I’m really happy with this too. These sensations though have nothing to do with future desires or ways of life. These are feelings from the past.

For much time I have forgotten my adventures, determined not to be that guy who just lives on his them, repeating them to someone until they get bored and you’re forced to move on. This forgetting though has also been because I have been creating new ones and haven’t needed to dwell on things that have happened. Now though without this ability to move on and find something new to experience, I am stuck experiencing a new way which I’ve allowed forced upon me. I different kind of forward. I have found myself over these last few months remembering past events or people and this began out in a sad way as in a way I wished I could go back to these moments. This is entirely natural. This has evolved though as now I have found myself experiencing these moments and seeing them through eyes that are happy to have had them. Instead of desiring their return I have been appreciating them, but more importantly in the strangest way experiencing parts of them once more.

It’s these sensations. This is the important part, the rest is a different special. To imagine yourself back in the moment and experiencing the forest air on the nostril, the sea water on the hot skin, the rain on the face. The emotion of seeing someone or experiencing a place that leaves you speechless. Even the sounds and visuals that I felt have been coming back to me. It’s hard to explain but it’s as if I’m experiencing memories with an intensity that touches on the actual moment as it happened, not just a thought of something that runs through my mind as a movie screen. I’ll go with it because it’s fascinating and I know it too won’t last forever. It’s all just about trying to understand. That’s all we can do. Be the cabra.

Day Ten

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I’m not sure if this is day ten or day eleven of my ten days without the news. For those with no idea what I’m talking about I decided to go ten days without looking at news channels or websites, I generally avoided Facebook except for emails and was left pretty confused and lost whenever anyone mentioned something going on in the world. I semi-accidentally saw a few news headlines over that period but generally avoided most things. The intention had been to avoid the sensationalised twenty-four hours a day news coverage and all the draining exhausting bullshit that goes along with that. I actually lost track of the days, I wasn’t even sure if it had been a week yet until I saw someones Facebook post about Donald Trump commuting his friend Roger Stone’s sentence and realised I really wanted to know what that was about. I haven’t actually found out because I don’t need to read an article to tell me everything that is already obvious.

It did make me want to check the amount of days without news I’ve gone though. So arguably and technically this is day ten if I wrote the piece making the challenge statement on the first of July. That also means I can’t check the news properly until tomorrow. All those little hints that something is going on with masks and shops, that Boris dug himself a hole with care homes yet again and that Jair Bolsonaro has caught coronavirus. This knowledge is all without checking the news once, it’s impossible to avoid everything. I also discovered that VAT on takeaway food is going to be reduced to five percent from twenty, which for someone who makes pizzas as one of his jobs is perhaps the best news I’ve heard all day.

I have enjoyed not knowing what’s going on in the world. It doesn’t create obvious amounts of anxiety in me but I’ve definitely noticed that I feel slightly freer without knowing whatever the latest ill facing the world is. Clearly I have to be realistic, without checking the news I’ve still been drawn to those updates above, amongst other things, which means I’ll never be able to avoid whats going on completely. I don’t see many happy people constantly glued to the world’s events. I doubt it brings out the best in us. We must find balance. The Royal We that is. This isn’t the time for grand statements about future intentions but hopefully I’ll remember this experience if I ever get myself caught up in the stupid bullshit once more. Here’s to liberty, forever more!!

How To Be Human In The Zombie Apocalypse

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Coronavirus panic seems to have ramped up to zombie apocalypse levels. I have not been able to resist keeping an eye on the latest news updates online and we seem to just be seeing photo’s of empty shelves and pandemonium everywhere. Apparently everyone is being selfish and one Tweet from some politician told of some guy buying the last of the pasta and refusing to share even one with some old lady. This would seem to prove the existence of widespread selfish behaviour, or at least prove examples of it exist and therefore the selfish narrative if you’re attempting to push one. I of course wasn’t there and haven’t been to a big supermarket in about ten days when I went to buy some goats milk butter, I’m so middle class, because they don’t have it in my local shop. Unsurprisingly there had not been a rush on it although I can confirm there wasn’t a great deal of toilet paper left, it does appear people think they can eat it. Seriously though of all the things to rush to buy, the one thing people think they can’t survive without is loo roll? In times of emergency I reckon you’ll get used to Indian style pretty quickly.

But back to this arsehole hoarding the pasta. If true I would love to know the bigger picture. Did he finally give her some? Did someone step in and persuade him to share? Or even force him to share? There are videos online of people fighting over toilet roll, imagine how it’ll be when it’s over the last tin of baked beans. I wonder what I would do in that situation, would I be a coward or would I stand up for the old lady, and would I give up or persevere. I doubt people really know beyond the fantasy of their imagination but I’m sure we all hope we would one way or another have managed to get the old lady her pasta.

Other updates in the ensuing apocalypse are that a raft of rather disagreeable world leaders seem to be getting tested. It’s a tricky one and I wonder how our public sentiments on these issues vary from our inner thoughts. Scumbags like Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton have tested positive, do we respond joyfully, neutrally or compassionately for him as a human being (supposedly). The Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tested negative, do we admit to a little disappointment? And then there’s the big one, The Donald has taken his test and will find out in a day or two. We are only human, are we at sainthood levels when we can react equally to everyone in the public eye getting tested? At what point do we just admit our response to hearing Tom Hanks and his wife tested positive was not the same as when we heard Donald Trump is being tested. Does that make us bad? They are still humans, they are still someones mother or father despite how disconnected from any concept of an emotional bond we imagine they have. But we’re also human so we’re fallible. That also means if we want to be excused for our own fallibility we may just have to try understand and excuse theirs. Or just continue being fallible, and proving how human we are.

Saying all of this, it won’t matter anyway soon. We’re all going to be deep in a zombie apocalypse as people prove the fragility of society. Proving they have no sense at all of the so called community they think they’re fighting for with guns or the ballot box. It’s depressing when you realise just how shit people not are but can be. I really hope that old lady got her pasta and whoever reported the moment didn’t just stand there and take a video of it on their phone. To miss the point of ones very own judgemental reporting. Ah to be human.